A union representing longshoremen was within its rights to sue an association of shipping companies to stop their vessels from docking at a new South Carolina shipping terminal employing non-union workers, a divided federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote affirmed a National Labor Relations Board ruling by holding that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was not engaged in an unfair labor practice when it sued the United States Maritime Alliance.
Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, writing for the majority, rejected an argument by the South Carolina Ports Authority, which operates the disputed terminal and brought a complaint against the ILA with the NLRB, that the union had illegally coerced the Maritime Alliance into a boycott in order to get more work for its members.
“We are disappointed in the 4th Circuit’s majority opinion,” Ports Authority President Barbara Melvin said in a statement. “We are reviewing the opinion and weighing all options for appeal.”
The NLRB and lawyers for the union and the Maritime Alliance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The dispute goes back to 2020, when the Ports Authority announced it would open the new Hugh Leatherman terminal in Charleston using non-union state employees as lift operators and ILA members for other work. The authority already used this hybrid worker model for two other Charleston terminals.
When Maritime Alliances ships docked at the new terminal, the ILA sued the organization, saying it had violated its collective bargaining agreement with the union.
That agreement generally requires Maritime Alliance ships to dock at ports on the East Coast that employ ILA workers for all unloading, though it acknowledges that a handful of ports use a hybrid model.
In response to the lawsuit, Maritime Alliance ships stopped calling at the new terminal.
The Ports Authority then filed a complaint with the NLRB, saying that the ILA’s lawsuit was an attempt to stop one employer from doing business with another in order to secure more work, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
The ILA countered that it was not trying to secure more work but rather preserve the work it has traditionally done. Although it has not traditionally operated lifts at the Leatherman terminal, it said, it has done so at other East Coast ports.
The NLRB sided with the union, and Diaz said there was no basis for overturning its decision, agreeing that the union “had a legitimate work-preservation objective.”
Diaz was joined by Senior Circuit Judge Diana Gribbon Motz. They were appointed to the court respectively by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, both Democrats.
U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, dissented.
He wrote that the union sought to secure more work by “intimidating Maritime Alliance carriers, who otherwise would call at the new terminal, thereby forcing them not to do so and thus effecting a secondary boycott — the exact course of conduct that Congress prohibited” in the NLRA.
The case is South Carolina State Ports Authority v. National Labor Relations Board, 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 23-1059.
For the Ports Authority: Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin
For NLRB: Heather Beard
For ILA: John Sheridan of Mazzola Mardon
For USMX: William Spelman of the Lambos Firm
Source; Hellenic Shipping News
